New England GigaPoP and High Bandwidth Network Project

Project Description

In this project, which is funded (Grant No. NCR-9617127) by the
National Science Foundation
under the
Connections to the Internet
program,
Boston University
will establish a framework to enable our
institution and other institutions to acquire high-bandwidth
connectivity among themselves, to the
vBNS,
and to the Internet. Our
purpose in doing this is both to put in place the sort of high bit rate
connectivity we need in order to conduct certain research in computational
science and networking, and to begin constructing the infrastructure
for the next generation network in our region. A substantial part of
the research and educational activity we will use this
high bandwidth network for, both within Boston University and in
conjunction with
other institutions, is associated with
MARINER,
our NSF-funded Metacenter Regional Alliances program.
There are three
components to this project:

High Bandwidth Metropolitan Network

NYNEX, the regional Bell operating company, plans to establish
an ATM cloud in the Boston metropolitan area by mid-1997. This
ATM cloud will operate initially at OC-3c level, and connections
to it at that speed (and lower) will be available at an aggressively priced
tariffed rate. This will enable us to establish a high-bandwidth
metropolitan area network interconnecting local institutions that
will allow our collaborators to make effective use of our
facilities and generally enable the kinds of regional activities that are
impracticable in the context of the current Internet.
(For want of a better term, we will use the
"metropolitan network" to refer to this area ATM cloud, even though
we anticipate that it will grow beyond what is strictly the metropolitan
Boston area.)

Metropolitan Link to the vBNS

In addition, we will bring the vBNS into Boston and into the
metropolitan network at
OC-3c level. We have our own
institutional needs for high bandwidth connectivity to the national
centers and to a number of associated researchers in various parts of
the country (e.g., see representative list of
research projects
below). Besides our own needs, however, it is our intention to
enable vBNS access for any institutions needing it that are connected
to the metropolitan ATM network. We expect to apportion our
cost of maintaining this connection across any such additional sites.
Several models for apportionment are under consideration, from equal
sharing of the cost to instituting a charge for bandwidth or total
traffic.

Internet Connectivity via ATM

Once the metropolitan ATM
network has proven stable, we will look for an
Internet provider to make Internet access available over the ATM
network. Our own current Internet connection uses a 10Mb
Ethernet-over-microwave technology that we have had in place since we
helped the vendor develop it in 1987. We are not far from loading it
to its realistic capacity of about 4 Mb/s, so we expect to be needing a
more robust pipe for this commodity traffic in the time-frame of this
project. We are also aware of similar capacity problems encroaching on
other institutions in the area. If we are successful in connecting a
significant number of other institutions into this ATM network, then
we should be able to leverage the needs of the whole group into
getting favorably priced Internet service.

Campus Network Architecture

While the bulk of the University's internal
network is 10 Mb/s Ethernet, we are already running both 155 Mb/s ATM and
800 Mb/s HiPPI networks for those applications that need higher
bandwidth. The HiPPI network is currently confined to communication
among the components of our 38-processor
SGI POWER CHALLENGEarray
and its associated graphics equipment, although it is also routed to the
rest of the campus network. As the required technology becomes
available, the HiPPI network will also be connected to our new
SGI Origin2000 supercomputer.
The ATM network, which will continue to
grow over time, connects these high-performance facilities to equipment
in the College of Engineering, the Departments of Chemistry and
Physics, the Center for Remote Sensing, the Center for Neural Systems,
and the Computer Graphics Laboratory (which also serves the Departments
of Computer Science and Mathematics). Essentially any location on
campus needing a high bandwidth connection can be readily served be
extending the ATM network through our existing fiber plant. Two such
extensions are already planned: one to the Department of Computer
Science, which is about to install a substantial amount of ATM
equipment in connection with an NSF Academic Research Infrastructure grant,
and another to the Manufacturing Engineering/Fraunhofer Collaboration,
which operates its own SGI Power Challenge in a computerized machining
facility. Routing between the ATM network and the general campus
network has been done through a conventional Bay router, but we are
planning to use a NetStar router to provide high speed routing directly
between the HiPPI network and the ATM network in the near future.

Metropolitan Network Topology

Our intention in establishing this metropolitan ATM network and vBNS
connection is to plant the seed of the next generation of networking
for the Boston area and as far beyond that as economics and the
carriers will allow it to grow. Our expectation is that once it becomes
immediately possible to connect to this network, and especially once we
are at the point of opening it up for Internet access, it will begin to
gather real momentum. We have seen this phenomenon twice before: with
BITNET in the early 1980's, for which we created the original Boston
hub; and with NEARnet in the late 1980's, which Boston University,
Harvard and MIT put together initially for the handful of sites that
were about to lose the ARPANET. The
figure
below shows in schematic form the
evolution we expect the metropolitan network to go through over time.
Initially (Stage 1), participating institutions will be interconnected
via the metropolitan ATM network but will retain their existing
Internet connections. Connections to the vBNS will be through Boston
University by way of the metropolitan network. In the diagrams, we
show application areas ("App") as gaining access through their campus
network structures. While this is the most desirable arrangement and
will be the case from the beginning at Boston University, we recognize
that connectivity may develop differently at other institutions. It is
possible that in some cases a research group or a department may be
more prepared to make the first connection than an institution as a
whole. Later (Stage 2), we expect to move Internet connectivity to the
metropolitan network, with an Internet Service Provider providing
high-speed connectivity directly to the ATM cloud. Finally (Stage 3),
on the assumption that the vBNS will itself evolve into a national
high-bandwidth research network, we would expect to take Boston
University out of the path and interconnect the metropolitan ATM
network and the vBNS directly.